Anyone who has explored the archive’s Animation and Cartoons section knows that we have an extensive collection of animated titles. So extensive, in fact, that one can get lost trying to find certain types of films. In order to showcase some of our holdings that feature one specific style of animation – Stop Motion Animation – this blog will produce a series with some of the collection’s highlights.

This week – animation with toys! Here are four artists who have this technique down pat:

Spite Your Face Productions: Tony Mines and Tim Drage

LEGO’s are among the most popular toys used in stop-motion animation. Just do a moving image search for LEGOs on the website and you’ll see the massive breadth of entries in this area. Not that there isn’t charm to some of the amateur attempts, but after wading through a number of these, its nice to see the work of some LEGO pros like Mines and Drage. They have a budget behind them, impressive collections of blocks and even digital animation for the facial expressions of some characters. The archive contains the following films from these two filmmakers:

Another entry in the LEGO category, Maduzia’s film The Letter is smoothly animated and clever with its gags – we are anxiously awaiting more films from James in the future!

Svencentral: Sven van der Hart

Former comic book illustrator Van der Hart is another pro, who uses Playmobil toys in his films. In The Viking Five, two sets of Vikings argue about who gets to rob an inebriated monk. In the very short Santa’s New Ride, Santa gets tempted by a vehicle upgrade (and Sir Mixalot), and in the ultra-professional Bloody Snow, toys turn violent in a Western-style showdown.